Part 18

“It’s cold here,” she said. “Why didn’t you come to bed, poor little beastie? It must certainly be very late—much too late for me to catch a car home. Ah, I feel changed. Come, Myra girl, let us both come to bed so that we’ll be warm. Do you feel as deathly cold as I do?”

“No,” said Myra curtly. “Lie down. I want to read a little more. I’m still too wide awake.”

“I’ll lie close to the wall,” Gisela said. “You’ll have room.”

“Yes, yes, thanks!”

Myra sat perfectly still again in her deep easy-chair. Again the weight of the revolver made a fine tight band across her neck. She reflected on her conduct and became dizzy as if she saw an abyss which she had crossed without having been aware of its terrible depth.

Had not a voice within her cried only a moment before, “Do it! Give her the revolver! Let her make an end of it, and then you’ll have peace!”

If she had done that, there would have been a shot, blood and brains would have spurted, a corpse would be lying in her room, or a dying woman.

She, Myra Rudloff, would have committed a murder!

Out of cowardliness, out of love of comfort, out of petty pitiful selfishness. She had already committed that murder in her mind. All that had been needed was an innocent lifting of her hand....

And then....

She shuddered and cowered.

From the bed came a deep regular breathing.

Myra’s mouth twisted into a scornful smile.

“But she would not have done it,” she thought, “she’d never have done it.”

* * * * *

A highroad stretched away toward the light. In the dark shadowy corners that the sun never reached, little stained rotting patches of snow were still lying. The fruit trees at either side of the road were laden with little ball-like buds on which a white streak was already discernible. The woods in the distance were enveloped in a reddish veil that betokened new life.

Myra and Sophie were wandering along the road.

“God, it’s beautiful,” said Myra, opening her mouth to draw the pure invigorating air into her lungs. “It was a wonderful idea of Nora’s to chase us both out!”

“Nora always has wonderful ideas,” said Sophie with a happy, affectionate pride. “She always knows what I need and what will do me good much better than I do myself. For the most part I never know what is the matter with me. Actually, I feel uncomfortable and I don’t know whether I should like to sleep, eat or go for a walk. Then Nora says to me, ‘You ought to lie down,’ or ‘you need to get out into the air’—and it’s always the right thing.”

“Good God, how beautiful the world is!” Myra exulted. “Oh, Sophus, I’m so insanely grateful to you for making me conscious again!”

“We will walk often in the open together,” said Sophie. “I’ll show you all the things that I looked at a hundred times long ago, very long ago, at a period when I was desperately lonely and devoured by the need of some human soul to whom I could show them. We must come here when the fruit trees are in bloom, and afterwards, when the whole woods is a garden of dog-roses and May-flowers, and in September when the leaves have turned.” She seized Myra’s hand, clasping the wrist with a grip so firm that it was almost painful. “You must not go away—that was all nonsense that I preached to you before. We’ll have to put your life to rights here. We must find something for you to do, and you must furnish a nice little home so that you don’t have to remain in that horrible pension. Then you’ll come after work and chat with us and once a week we’ll have to declare a holiday and run around the mountains from morning till night.” Suddenly she changed her tone and said with an amusing dryness, “And then when we’re tired out, we’ll stand on some declivity where we can smell the dinner that God destined for us, steaming out of the chimney pots below, and we won’t be able to get down....”

“We’ll get down!” said Myra confidently. “If for no other reason, because we can’t do anything else. Or shall we turn aside from our goal to seek an easier way? Never!”

At first, while their feet sank in the rustling leaves, the going was easy. But during the last stage, just on a level with the roofs, above the road, there were more pines and spruces and the ground was strewn with needles which in the bright sunlight were smoother than a waxed floor.

Sophie who was accustomed from childhood to the ups and downs of mountains, though she was somewhat out of practice of late, was nevertheless much surer-footed than Myra, who looked for a supporting branch from step to step. Sophie stretched out her hand to her, but Myra declined it ambitiously. Whereupon both of them began to laugh at themselves, at one another, at their little adventure, at the quips they shouted. All that was necessary was for one of them to warn the other that he might slip, to turn the laughter they were trying to suppress into a peal of childish merriment. Myra laughed until the tears came into her eyes. She was no longer watching where she stepped. Suddenly her feet slipped, a branch which she caught at snapped and remained in her hands. She would certainly have fallen had not Sophie, whose one foot was supported against a root, stooped and caught her and held her upright. They remained for a moment breast to breast, hot, laughing, panting for breath, while their pulses throbbed. At the same moment both became serious. Their faces bent one toward the other—humbly, ineluctably, lips were laid against lips.

Myra closed her eyes. She felt Sophie’s feverish mouth on her eyelids, her temples, her cheeks. She heard her hot voice in a whisper.

“Don’t move, don’t resist, or we will both go plunging down!”

She had no thought of resisting. She had no thought of moving. She stood motionless. Her heart seemed to expand, to grow warm. It seemed to her as if she must flower under these caresses like a young tree in May.

They ate lunch under a friendly enticing red roof, and crossing the silvery lake, wandered toward the station. At times they were boisterous, at times sentimental, but always courteously reserved on the personal theme. They spoke of a thousand things, but not of themselves, not of that which both were thinking and feeling.

At the small station, they sat with other people, silent and tired, waiting for the train. The darkness set in early. The little lanterns cast a melancholy light through the blue dusk. Myra began to feel cold, and pressed her face against her raised coat collar.

At last the train came. They both looked for an empty compartment without stating their intention. They found one and climbed in.

“Now everything will be all right,” thought Myra. “I will lay my head on her shoulder and she will say gentle, nice things to me. Then this cold feeling will go away.”

Sophie sat beside her, leaning slightly forward, and stared out the window without saying a word—for a long, a long, long time. Outside, fields and forest glided by, shrouded deeper and deeper in the twilight, broken at rare intervals by a lighted window, a solitary lantern. At last Sophie turned her face to Myra, a face which in the feeble glow of the flickering little gas-lamp looked grave, deathly pale and tense in every feature.

“I told you something this morning, Myra,” she began awkwardly, stammering, and yet it sounded as if she had spent the last hour learning it by heart. “Just recollect it as if it were the only thing I had said or done. I told you to go away from here! And now I beg you if you bear me the least—good will—‘Go away from here!’ I’ve known for almost thirty years that I cannot live without Nora. I’ve proved it to myself. I went to the bad in every sense when I lost contact with her, and I became a human being and a worker at the moment she came to me. I have lived for five years in the conviction that I am unequivocally happy. I dare not let anything shake that conviction. I dare not ever think that there is another possibility in life for me than Nora. She would feel it and she would go. She endures her sufferings solely because she is an absolute necessity to me. She would end it all if she knew that I was happy for as much as an hour without her. Perhaps you like us so well that it will be a real sacrifice to give up your friendly relations with us. I would almost say, I hope so.” She bowed her head very low so that Myra should not see the quivering of her lips. “But I know that you will make this sacrifice because you have an intimation of what is involved. I have overestimated my powers. It is very bad to have to confess that to you. When you are gone, I will confess it to Nora. But not now, as long as it might deprive her of her peace for a moment. And I would not find the right voice in which to tell it now!” She stared out the window again.

Myra’s throat was parched.

“Of course,” she said without thinking, “naturally.” And again, “Yes, of course, naturally!” without knowing what she meant by it.

When the train stopped, Sophie jumped out and caught Myra’s elbow in order to assist her. But she relinquished it again at once, and both smiled with hurt and embarrassment.

They took leave of one another on the platform with a firm squeeze of the hand.

“Get home safely, child,” said Sophie, “and get safely through life. And I thank you—for everything.”

“And I you,” answered Myra in a lifeless voice.

Then she dropped the good firm hand.

For a moment their eyes met, stole one into the other’s, then they shifted again, as if frightened, to some bright point in the distance.

Sophie turned. She plunged both hands in her pockets, bent her head and strode away.

For a while she continued to tower above the crowds of hurrying people, then her tall figure was submerged and disappeared.

Slowly, with heavy footsteps, Myra turned toward the opposite stairway.

XV

They sat first in the basket-chairs in front of a café with little lamps that had roses on the silk shades and pearl fringes. There were Gisela, Kramer, Mara Luigi, Will Kraft, John. They ate fruit-ices and waffles and drank a sweet liqueur, in order, as Giesbert said, “to prevent a glaciation of their stomach walls.”

But Mara Luigi who had been dancing, and Kraft and John, who had been to the concert, had not eaten that evening and expressed their cravings for a real beefsteak. So they travelled two doors farther down to a wine restaurant where the orchestra was playing the same pieces in a somewhat different order.

After their meal they went to the nearest bar and drank a Sweden punch and a bottle of champagne, and Mara Luigi danced with Giesbert and Kraft, which caused all the other dancers to stop and stare with interest. Myra felt her vanity somewhat flattered because she was with such excellent dancers.

But the official closing time came. The waiters brought the bill, turned down the lights and drew the heavy purple curtains across the windows. But nobody thought of getting up and going.

At a neighboring table were sitting a beautiful blonde woman and two gentlemen. Myra kept staring at her all evening. The blonde woman regarded everything with a smiling or surprised curiosity, as if she were at a zoological garden, while the two robust gentlemen sat beside her as if it were their task to shield her from every impertinent glance and every poisonous breath.

“Probably one of them is her husband the other her brother,” thought Myra. “There is a place unoccupied at their table, why don’t I sit there? Don’t I belong among that kind of people? By family, education, training and manners? The smooth-shaven man is certainly her brother—he’s the dead image of her. Wouldn’t it be much more suitable if I were married to him, and were making a little evening out with my brother and sister-in-law. That would be very nice. But why do I want that? Merely because I have a nostalgia for perfectly plain simple bourgeois surroundings, or because that lovely woman pleases me?”

When the three people had left the neighboring table, Myra began to find it quite boresome and sterile. She was tired and had had her fill, but it seemed to her as if something further must happen in order to give this senseless expenditure of time and money some semblance of justification. She was afraid that it would happen again, as always, when she left a party early because she could not endure the boredom of it any longer. Everybody would say to her next day, “Oh, what a pity that you went so early, it was especially nice later on, we met so and so, and we had such a good time!”

Gisela was all for going to the Club. The others, except Kraft, who never touched a card, not from moral scruples, but because they bored him to death, agreed.

Myra was a little frightened. She knew that it would turn out as usual. Gisela would play and lose. Then Myra would try to save something and place her own bet—with some caution and discretion, and would win twice and lose three times. Or the other way round.

In any case, those hours at the Club always cost a few hundred or a few thousand marks, and for a week Myra would calculate the lost sums in terms of the books she saw in show-windows or handsome wood and leather goods. Or she would look at the beggars on the street whom she could have made happy, and the pale-faced children, with burning eyes, standing in front of toy shops or confectioners’ windows.

To be sure—she herself was not much put out. She could telegraph the bank and in a few hours would have as much money as she wanted. She was not extremely clever at banking manipulations but she did know one thing, she spent more than her interest. Sometimes it gave her an uneasy feeling, almost a slight dizziness. But she scolded herself for a narrow-minded Philistine. She would never have children—and she would not live long. It might even be good not to possess another cent and have, so to speak, to balance on a tight-rope. Such a situation would prove whether the forces of life were strong enough in her. Perhaps she would be happier in some very modest walk of life where she had to work—as a waitress or a shop-girl. Perhaps physical need would be at once an impetus and an absolution for putting her beloved revolver to her forehead.

But it was not merely indifference to life or death that caused Myra to go to the Club with the others. Gisela played with more bad luck than passion, and if she was so insistent about going to the Club or some bar or dance-hall, it was because she hoped to meet Fiametta there. Myra knew this. They had met often during the winter, and Myra was fascinated each time by her eloquent and haughty beauty, and was each time vexed because Fiametta was always dressed in better taste, was more assured in her manner, and above all, travelled in much better company than Myra.

As no one was at hand to attract Myra’s attention, she looked at herself in a mirror. She seemed quite a stranger to herself, and yet acceptable. She winked at herself in the glass as if to say, “Never fear, tonight we’ll manage to put on as haughty a face as that conceited person!”

* * * * *

By the time they left the Club they were all in a more or less bad humor. They had all lost except John, who, with his hands full of bills, was running after Kraft and with tears in his eyes and a pleading voice, trying to force the money on him.

Will Kraft refused it with a scarcely veiled irritation, his hands plunged in the pockets of his jacket.

Both of them made Myra feel sorry. And Kramer made her feel sorry too, for he had lost heavily, and was now quite pale and monosyllabic.

And Giesbert and Mara Luigi made her feel sorry: they were bandying reproaches for not having bet at least on different sides of the table. Under their harsh muttered words was something like a hate that has been smouldering for years.

And Gisela made her feel sorry, because she looked wretched and decayed, like a chronic invalid—and because she had not met Fiametta.

And she felt sorry for herself—Oh, she felt so sorry for herself!

They were all in a bad humor, but nobody wanted to go home and get over it by himself. All of them were expecting some compensation for this squandered night, some mad intoxication, some vast jollification—sensation, experience, joy, or an hour’s oblivion of all vexations.

“Where do we go from here?” asked Giesbert, swinging his cane with somewhat affected high spirits. “Heads up, ladies and gentlemen, heads up! As everybody knows, the tom-cat doesn’t really go into action till morning! Forward to our sweet Emil’s! I wager that the overwhelming majority of our distinguished little company will feel quite at home there.”

They turned down a quiet dark side-street where stood a quiet dark little third rate middle class beer-shop. An elderly woman, bare headed, with a shawl around her shoulders, seemed to be waiting for a dog that was sniffing around, and which she called and motioned to from time to time.

Giesbert appeared to know her. He greeted her with a friendly slap on the back, and asked her to open the door.

The old lady undertook to guide them, and amidst constant cries of “Watch out!” they went up and down stairs, across an unlighted yard, through narrow doors, and tiny pitch-black passages between thick baize curtains, until suddenly there was a confusion of lights, sounds, colors and voices.

The large long room, bathed in lilac light, was decorated with impeccable taste. Black and lavender were the dominating colors. The thick carpet was black strewn with lavender flowers. The polished panelling, the marble mantelpiece, the velvet hanging covered with wildly fantastic lavender designs were also black. On the cornice of the panelling were black bronze and black wood-carvings, standing out against the lilac wallpaper.

“How pretty!” said Myra her eyes wide with surprise. “How does it come to be here?”

“Oh, his friends have furnished it for him,” said Giesbert with a rather ironic smile. “As a kind of private establishment! Why shouldn’t it be pretty? There are very wealthy people among them—and some very well-known artists—painters, sculptors, interior decorators—or what have you! In return, little Emil provides them champagne and company!”

“Emil!” called John to a slender, sinuous, dark-haired man. “Show our ladies your establishment!”

Emil was all graciousness. He opened a narrow door, and they entered a dimly lighted, somber room, in which were standing a dozen brown tables. The light willow chairs had been piled on them, and the whole room was embellished with advertisements of beer and tobacco companies.

At one table in a corner a pair of young fellows were lounging with cards in their hands.

Next door was the real beer-shop whose window gave on the street. More chairs and tables, the tank with its brightly polished taps and a player-piano against the wall. The place was in almost total darkness, only a little night-lamp above the buffet was reflected in the metal trimmings. In one corner they saw two shadowy figures that seemed to be wrestling, and heard suppressed gigglings.

They returned to the first room, and Emil, as he was called on all sides, assisted them to find a cozy table and the necessary number of chairs.

Myra regarded the people around her with a mixture of curiosity, sympathy and aversion.

Not far off, there was sitting a fat black-bearded man on whose broad and hairy hand a rosy solitaire flashed and sparkled. And that fat-fingered hand adorned with rings was toying with the head and shoulder of a pale young lad, clad in what was obviously an outworn Sunday best. He seemed half brazen and half embarrassed.

At another table was seated a distinguished looking old gentleman, whose finely chiselled features and gray Van Dyke, betrayed the thinker. One of his slender white hands lay at the base of a champagne glass, the other accompanied his long discourses as if he were on a platform or in the pulpit. His handsome blue eyes glowed as though afire with youthful enthusiasm. Opposite him, sat a broad-shouldered, bull-neck soldier, with a good-looking honest peasant’s face, grinning, flattered but uncomprehending.

More even than the men, the women attracted Myra’s attention. They ran the whole gamut of types. Some had on dark jackets, with lapels, breast-pockets and stiff collars. On their mannishly cut hair they wore small men’s hats. Others betrayed themselves only by a slight overpainting. The sharp features of a few expressed intelligence and character. There were others who verged on the cocotte.

One in particular Myra thought very beautiful. She was tall and slender, had short golden brown curls and the build and features of a Greek boy. She was sitting with a big party having a very good time, and laughed a lot and seemed slightly drunk.

A sweet provocative muffled music issued from behind the curtain. Two young soldiers in uniform had clasped one another around the hips and were swaying, body to body, in waltz rhythm. Despite their heavy boots, they stepped as delicately and discreetly as women dancers—not a step was audible.

“Ah, Emil,” said Giesbert, “how real life is here! When I think I’ll get a bottle of champagne, I get it, but when I think, I’ll get nine bottles, I don’t get them!”

“No, no, Mr. Giesbert,” said Emil, smiling, “you can have nine bottles too!”

They drank champagne, and champagne with red wine, and champagne with Port, and Benedictines, and Sweden punches and flips and champagne.

Myra drank somewhat prudently, and it amused her to watch how one after the other, they began to talk nonsense.

But although she was still mistress of her tongue and her thoughts, she felt her blood pulsing somewhat faster and the music lap her nerves in a warm stream. For a moment, as she closed her eyes, she felt a desire, and actually visualized herself sitting by the Rhine, on a terrace, or in a garden, listening to old sentimental folk songs from the water, and drinking a fragrant “Maybowl” with trusted friends.

When she opened her eyes and saw the room with its morbid color-scheme, filled with smoke and fumes, she was overwhelmed with aversion and misery.

They had become quite merry at her table. All had soft, parted, burning lips and glowing eyes. All laughed and nestled into their chairs as into a caress, or groped for one another with their hands.